Claim CH561.1:

Patterns of fossil deposition in Noah's Flood can be explained by
ecological zonation. The lower strata, in general, would contain animals
that lived in the lower elevations. Thus, marine invertebrates would be
buried first, then fish, then amphibians and reptiles (who live at the
boundaries of land and water), and finally mammals and birds. Also,
animals would be found buried with other animals from the same
communities.

Source:

Response:

The fossil record does not show such a pattern of organisms sorted
ecologically:

Many animals that appear in the lower strata appear in all strata,
even recent ones. Corals and clams, for example, appear at all
levels.

Whales do not appear until much later than fish, despite living in
the same ecological zones.

Birds do not appear until after flying reptiles.

Dinosaurs consistently appear in strata before modern land animals.

Grasses live in virtually all land areas, but they appear in the
geological record only near the top, long after other land animals
and plants.

Even if ecological zonation could explain how deeply various faunal
zones are buried, it does not explain how they came to be buried atop
one another. How did a terrestial ecology come to be transported on
top of a marine ecology, such that fine details such as footprints,
burrows, and paleosols were undisturbed and such that the layer
extends over hundreds of square miles? How did many such layers get
stacked on top of each other? Ecological zonation implies that the
ecological zones got buried in place. What we see is ecological zones
forming and living for awhile on top of the fossils of older ecological
zones, repeatedly.

Fossil strata often appear in orders that contradict ecological
zonation (and other flood deposition explanations). For example, North
American midcontinent outcrops record at least fifty-five cycles of
marine inundation and withdrawal (Boardman and Heckel 1989; Heckel
1986). That is, marine ecologies are interleaved with terrestrial
ecologies.